Writing at Antiwar.com, Natylie Baldwin reports on letters sent in October by the US Treasury Department to American writers Daniel Lazare and Michael Averko, threatening fines of up to “$311,562 or twice the value of the underlying transaction.”

The “underlying transaction” in question? Getting paid to write for a publication the US government disapproves of: The Strategic Culture Foundation, a Russian think tank sanctioned by the Treasury Department because it’s regarded as an arm of the Russian state.

Yes, you read that right: Putting in one’s two cents on current affairs (the SCF’s focus) can yield a profit of more than 1.5 million percent!

Unfortunately, that investment return runs in the wrong direction — out of the writer’s portfolio and into the US Treasury.

Although I’ve run across the Strategic Culture Foundation’s articles here and there, and recognize the names of some of the authors whose work appears on its site, I can’t claim any great familiarity with its editorial line or funding sources.  For all I know, it really IS a Russian state medium associated with that regime’s intelligence service and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In other words, SCF may be the equivalent of the US government’s Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio y Television Marti, Center for Strategic and International Studies, et al.

If so, well … so what?

The First Amendment’s freedom of speech and press clauses make no exceptions for speech or writing published in foreign media, or speech or writing for which the writers or speakers are paid. Nor, the US not being at war with Russia, is there any question of, say, treason (“adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort”) involved.

Last time I checked, the US Constitution, as “Supreme Law of the Land,” outweighed Executive Order 13848, under which the Treasury Department issued its threats against Lazare and Averko.

Writing for a foreign publication, even a state-funded or -operated publication, even for money, is not a crime.

Threatening writers for doing so is a crime in both the legal and moral sense.

Since 2002, the United States has fallen from 17th place to 44th place on the Reporters Without Borders global press freedom index. Need we wonder why?

US president Joe Biden says that “a free press is essential to the health of democracy.” If he means it, he’ll forbid future use of  his predecessor’s Executive Order 13848 to impose censorship under threat of financial punishment.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup,” Barton Gellman writes at The Atlantic. “It will rely on subversion more than violence …. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024.”

There’s nothing new about claims that an election was stolen, or is about to be. The phenomenon stretches back into the 19th century —  most famously the 1876 presidential election, which was arguably stolen from Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on behalf of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.

Of the six presidential elections since 2000, at least four have generated loud claims of fraud. Democrats complained of judicial  skulduggery in Florida in 2000 and voting machine rigging in 2004. In 2016, Democrats asserted “Russian meddling” to explain Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, while Trump (and Republican supporters) insisted in both 2016 and 2020 that he could only lose (and lost) if the election was “rigged.”

And, to be fair, the two major parties use ballot access laws and debate participation schemes to rig EVERY presidential election, and most other elections, to preclude the possibility of a competitive independent or third party candidacy.

Democrats are already sowing the seeds for claims of a rigged 2024 election with credible complaints about Republican efforts to, well, rig the 2024 election.

In a 2016 column, I pointed out the danger that casting doubt on election credibility represents to the United States as we know it. History is full of  coups (real ones, not annoying riots), revolutions, and civil wars sparked by arguments over who gets to be in charge. America is not immune to that possibility.

But for libertarians and anarchists like me, there’s a potential up side to this growing distrust of election outcomes.

The next step after losing trust in the integrity of the election system and the honesty of the outcomes that system announces is losing trust in the idea of elections as a way to settle our differences.  That could be a very good thing, as long as we don’t replace elections with monarchs or other rulers for life.

The problem with politics is not who we put in charge, or how we put them in charge. It’s THAT we put them in charge.

As military strategist Carl von Clausewitz pointed out, “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Conversely, politics is the waging of war by other means.

Thomas Hobbes described the state of nature as “the war of all against all” and prescribed government as the cure. He got it exactly backward.

Putting something — anything, no matter how trivial — under the control of politicians amounts to declaring eternal, unceasing war over that thing.

The best solution to the perceived problems of election “rigging,” election “meddling,” etc., isn’t to resign ourselves to dictatorship, or even to seek more trustworthy elections. It’s to cut the power of government down so much that elections become too unimportant to bother “rigging” or “meddling in.”

We can have politics, or we can have peace. We can’t have both.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Join me,” US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted on November 29, “in demanding the #GhislaineMaxwellTrial be public.”

In reply, attorney (and former Libertarian National Committee chair) Nicholas Sarwark tweeted “Is the Congresswoman unaware that all Federal criminal trials are public, as required by our Constitution?”

Mr. Sarwark is correct, but Congresswoman Greene has a point.

The Sixth Amendment specifies that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.”

Traditionally, that’s been taken to mean that members of the public (and press) may plant their posteriors in seats in the courtroom and watch the proceedings. But don’t bet the ranch on even that seemingly reasonable concession to transparency.  I’ve seen municipal courts get around it by filling the courtroom with a whole day’s worth of defendants, then having a bailiff stop would-be spectators outside the door, claiming there’s only room for those defendants and their attorneys.

Additionally, many courts — including US federal courts such as the one hearing the Maxwell case — either don’t allow, or only selectively allow,  recording and/or broadcast of trials.

As a libertarian, I’m not big on appeals to “there ought to be a law.” Or on agreeing with Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But in this case,  I do agree with her.

It’s 2021, not 1821. Allowing an artist to draw pictures, and a reporter to take notes, for publication in a newspaper is neither necessary nor sufficient to make a trial “public.”

There ought to be a law.

Not a law that applies only to sensational or controversial trials like that of Ghislaine Maxwell, accused of procuring young girls for Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual predations.

A law requiring that all trial proceedings, from the local level to the US Supreme Court, be made “public” for real.

By law, all trial proceedings should be live streamed — audio and video — to publicly accessible platforms, with links to those streams prominently posted on the web sites of the courts in which those proceedings occur.

Just as the availability of everything from tape recorders to photocopiers to social media has extended the reach of the First Amendment, cameras and live streaming platforms can expand the application, and make real the promise, of the Sixth.

Yes, controversial trials will get the most attention. But the ability to see American justice in action at all levels and without filters is a key first step toward making it truly just.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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